


'til our compass stands still

by jemmasimmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, Academy Era, Angst, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:17:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6231100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmons/pseuds/jemmasimmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Partnered together in Chem Lab, she held out her hand and introduced herself. “Jemma Simmons, biochemist.” She needn’t have bothered; he already knew who exactly she was. Nonetheless, he reciprocated. “Leopold Fitz, engineering.” He needn’t have bothered; she already knew exactly who he was too."<br/>-<br/>The story of Fitzsimmons told in the space of a day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	'til our compass stands still

**Author's Note:**

> \+ I haven't managed to write a fic in six months and I manage to write one on a random afternoon after I've spiralled a little bit, typical.  
> \+ This is a fic I actually started a while ago and found today, and kinda just reworked in a few hours so I could post it. So tada!!  
> \+ I'm actually super proud of myself I genuinely think I could cry it's been so long!!  
> \+ But anyway, I hope you enjoy this and please tell me what you think! I'm a little out of practise but at least I'm getting back into it. Slowly but surely.   
> \+ The title it from West by Sleeping at Last.

He met her in the morning.

Sixteen and achingly shy, he tucked himself quietly into the back of the lecture hall. He hadn’t thought much of himself until a man in a suit come knocking at his door one day, whisking him away from the safety of his home in Scotland to the bright halls of the Academy. They told him he was brilliant, a prodigy even, yet he couldn’t help but feel out of place.

She was only sixteen when she arrived, her birthday only twenty-three days after his, making her a living legend by simply walking through the doors. But her home in the English countryside couldn’t have seemed further away to her, and she wondered if the Academy was one problem she’d never be able to solve.

Partnered together in Chem Lab, she held out her hand and introduced herself. “Jemma Simmons, biochemist.” She needn’t have bothered; he already knew who exactly she was. Nonetheless, he reciprocated. “Leopold Fitz, engineering.” He needn’t have bothered; she already knew exactly who he was too.

Together, they were the envy of the Academy – legends in their own right, though they never thought of themselves as that. To each other, they were just best friends, taking on the together world one step at a time. They were just two people, endlessly inquisitive, about to embark on a journey that would change their lives but they didn’t know where it would go.

 

 

 

 

He proposed to her in the afternoon.

She had almost missed it at first, glancing around only to find he wasn’t a tip-toe’s height above her, but by her feet. He looked at her as if she were the universe and if he were only a mere part of it, but in reality she knew that he was the universe too.

She began to cry when he held the ring in his hand. She had once told him that this was where she had imagined they’d grow old together, in a little cottage in Perthshire, only she had never imagined that it would eventually come true.

She flung her arms around him before his words even had a chance to fall, and she held him tighter than she ever thought she could. Their future was falling into place, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to let go.

“So is that a yes?”

She had traced the rim of his jaw with her thumb, laughing softly through her tears. “What do you think?”

“Yes?”

“Yes, Fitz. Of course, yes.”

He spun her in his arms, letting her laughter ring in his ears - the most beautiful sound he thought could have ever existed – and together, they danced within the walls of their new home. The walls that would soon hold the memories of a future, their future, as they embarked on the next step of their journey together.

 

 

 

 

He spent his life with her in the evening.

He felt his breath escape him for a moment as she appeared at the end of the room, a vision of white, and vowed to spend her whole life with him; her best friend in the entire the world. He vowed to do the same, choking up as he tried to translate his feelings into words. But he didn’t have to, she knew. She’d always known. They had never really spoken with words anyway.

Before they could have registered the time that had passed, their home got a little smaller and their family a little bigger. A little girl with his eyes and her nose toddled around the halls, painting the walls with the colours of her youth; she had his temper too.

Soon, she was joined by a brother, later followed by a little sister. They all bore the same brown hair, which curled at a touch and hung ragged around their faces, though the youngest of the three had the most ragged hair of all. It added to her charm, they told people.

Weeks turned to months, and months turned into years and soon they were sixty and perfectly content, watching her nose and his eyes pass down through the generations. She watched as her granddaughter opened her very first science kit, only seven and already prepared to take on the world, laughing as she excitably scrambled through experiment after experiment just as she had done all those years ago.

The chaos came and went, until soon they were all grown up with lives and families of their own. They visited on the odd occasion, but they didn’t seem mind. They had seen where the journey could take them, and they were keen for them to see where it lead them.

 

 

 

 

He said goodbye to her in the night.

He gripped her hand just before she went, studying every inch of her face as if it could have been the last time, which to his surprise, it was. He had never understood how a single person could have given him everything he never saw in life, but then again he couldn’t have ever imagined that a person like her could have ever existed.

She held onto him tightly, tracing the back of his hand in little circles to soothe him as she began to drift of. She spoke words of comfort to him, recycled little phrases that held so much meaning to them, but to someone else could have meant nothing at all.

She told him that she would always be with him, because truly, she would. They had been together the whole damn time, and just because she was leaving it didn’t necessarily mean that she wasn’t there. She asked him if he remembered when they had first met, how he was so quiet and pasty and how she thought she was annoying him by following him around constantly. He only laughed softly, replying “I wouldn’t have married you if you did.”

As the night drew to a close, he held her in his arms. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, drawing circles into her shoulder as she slowly faded away. She buried her head into her chest, and stubbornly refused to let his hand go as she drifted away. She told him that she would always be with him, but as the breath escaped from her lips, she faded from view for the last time.  

 

 

 

 

He found her again in the morning.

They were sixteen and achingly shy, about to embark on a journey that would change their lives forever, but they didn’t know where it would go.


End file.
